


The Longest Night

by thearrogantemu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Elvish Repetitive Stress Injuries, Fluff, Gen, Hand-Touching, Ring-Making, Seasonal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 14:36:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13719768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thearrogantemu/pseuds/thearrogantemu
Summary: The feast of Midwinter’s Night drew near.  Each year the apprentices of the Mirdain took the practice gems that they made while learning to bind light to matter and shattered them into pebble-sized pieces, which they stuck to tree-limbs with lumps of resin so that in the darkness the trees glittered as if the stars of the sky were caught in their branches.  Elves and Dwarves and Men went about the streets of Ost-in-Edhil singing, and the shapes wrought in song-silver set into the stones of the roadway kindled at the sound. The streets themselves shone throughout the night, fading only with the pale light of dawn in the sky.





	The Longest Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sumeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sumeria/gifts).



> This is a piece of short fluff (see! I can write short fluff!) written as a Christmas present for my faithful beta reader Sumeria. It takes place relatively early in the collaboration between Celebrimbor and his guest, and as such, can be considered as part of the continuity for both "These Gifts That You Have Given Me" and "In Full Measure I Return To You".

Winter came to Eregion that year in a whirl of wind and snow, tearing the last leaves from the beeches and dusting the dark holly with white. The Gwathlo, which rarely froze even in the coldest winters, ran sluggish and grey, but ice crept across the narrower Sirannon. The apprentices of the Gwaith-i-Mirdain strapped blades to their boots and held races and dances and contests of skill on the frozen river, much to the amazement of the Dwarves and of the Mirdain’s guests from the South.

The long visiting season had begun; no more travelling would be done until the Spring thaw. The guest-rooms of Ost-in-Edhil were full, and at the edges of the city, people drew closer to its heart. The great midwinter hunt went out into the forests for a week, and returned with much laughter and singing, laden down with deer and game birds to feed the city through the winter.

Yarrisse, solitary and taciturn, left a wild boar at the Mirdain’s own kitchens. The beast was bigger than she was; she surely had not taken it alone, but those who followed her on her mad hunts melted back into the city and the classrooms of the Brotherhood, giving no sign of who they were.

The feast of Midwinter’s Night drew near.  Each year the apprentices of the Mirdain took the practice gems that they made while learning to bind light to matter and shattered them into pebble-sized pieces, which they stuck to tree-limbs with lumps of resin so that in the darkness the trees glittered as if the stars of the sky were caught in their branches.  Elves and Dwarves and Men went about the streets of Ost-in-Edhil singing, and the shapes wrought in song-silver set into the stones of the roadway kindled at the sound. The streets themselves shone throughout the night, fading only with the pale light of dawn in the sky.

Celebrimbor was more absent from the preparations for the festivities than he had been in some previous years. It was generally agreed that the Ring-craft was on the verge of a breakthrough, that the Rings’ power to focus and bind were capable of being exponentially enhanced, if only they could be made stable. His journeymen were released early from their assignments and he spent day after day in the workshop, sometimes alone, sometimes with Annatar, sometimes with a small colloquy of the other masters. 

To the eyes of his students – who now were all below in the great hall, weaving crowns of holly and building the great fire for the all-night feast – Celebrimbor, bent over his workbench, would have appeared almost perfectly still. He held a Ring between two fingers in one hand, and in the other, barely touching the smooth gold surface, a tool like a graver. Annatar, who was perched on the window-ledge watching him, could see exactly what he was doing:  spinning out tendrils of power into his latest prototype. The fine tip of the graver was alight with a subtle flame drawn from his own spirit.

Outside, a few flakes drifted down from the flat, clouded sky, already nearly dark. Beyond the Mirdain’s gates, the lights of the city were bright and homely.

“I don’t know about this Midwinter’s Fair,” Annatar announced, looking out over the city. The vendors in each of the three circles were closing up their stalls for the night, and final sales were changing hands. “At least not the way you Elves insist on conducting your circle. Offering goods without price, or asking a smile or a song in exchange! It’s no wonder the mortals think you mean to steal their souls.”

Celebrimbor laughed, without raising his head. “You sound like one of the Dwarves! Bruri had the same complaints. Next you’ll be on about ‘destabilizing the exchange rates’ and ‘excess liquidity’. There are two whole circles of the market you can keep to if you insist on prices paid or trades made rather than gifts exchanged!” A minute adjustment of the graving tool. “Why, was there something you wanted to acquire from the Elves?”

Annatar made no answer to this, instead looking out beyond the city. “Do you know if that aunt of yours will be at the feast tonight?”

This time Celebrimbor did pause in his work. “What? No, they’re keeping the feast in their own halls this year. You know Celeborn has little taste for the city. But come to think of it, Annatar, why aren’t you down in the Great Hall? The dancing must have begun already!” This was an old joke between them. Annatar had never danced with the Mirdain since Midsummer so long ago, and after the experience of that night, no one had had the nerve to ask him.

“How can I dance without you?” returned Annatar lightly, and Celebrimbor took the sudden knot of nameless longing that twisted in his chest and pushed it out through his fingers, into the whirling substance of the ring that he was refining.  “Since these are the measures you wish to tread tonight, where else should I be but here?”

There was a change in the arrangement of the room; Celebrimbor knew without looking that Annatar had left the window and was standing at his shoulder. The ring burned between his fingers. Time faded, stretched, was caught in that golden circle, spun down into its substance, vanished. Annatar’s presence burned beside his mind; close enough to feel but not to touch.

He drew a long breath and set the ring down. There was no light at all in the sky; the Longest Night had begun hours ago. The lampstone over the workbench was giving back the daylight, but the ring, and Annatar, were clear to his sight with a light that had nothing to do with the sun. He sat back, straightening his spine and shifting his shoulders, and in the corner of his eye he caught something like a sudden movement as Annatar caught him flexing his right hand back and forth and grimacing.

“Give me your hand.” Annatar held out his own.

“It’s not – you don’t have to –“ But he gave him his hand nonetheless, and felt the familiar painless burning as Annatar’s fingers closed around his own, pressing firmly and inquisitively, mapping muscle and nerve. The touch of his skin was always cool at first, and then behind it Celebrimbor could feel the heat, heat like a furnace, like the heart of the earth, like the core of the sun.

“Tyelperinquar, what is this?” His voice was sharp and disapproving. “Stress to the point of damage – are you simply not paying attention? You’re not some kind of mortal; a little of your strength redirected to brace the –“

He broke off.

“So you see,” returned Celebrimbor tartly. “It’s not the body at all, at least it didn’t start there. Evidently prolonged and repeated effort of this sort irritates the spirit as well; the principle is the same but I can’t just  _ will myself stronger _ .” He sighed, and would have moved his hands outward in his characteristic gesture of  _ problem-being-worked-on _ , but one was caught in Annatar’s and only strained slightly against him. “What it actually needs is rest, of course; for me to just stop using both hand and mind this way for a while, but when we’re so close to figuring out how to stabilize the binding matrix for the Rings – you know how close we are, you don’t want to stop any more than I do –“

Annatar was rubbing small circles, lightly, at the base of his thumb. He seemed to be lost in thought. “I’m not actually sure...” he said to himself. “But no, if we can soothe the initial irritation, then preventative maintenance should be sufficient.”

“You don’t need to; I can take this to the healers.”

“After you spend another half-century teaching them enough of the Ring-craft to begin to understand the sort of strain you’ve put on your soul? My most estimable Tyelperinquar, I’m sure the healers of the Mirdain are perfectly adequate to poulticing a burn or quieting a fit of exam-panic, but if you put even the slightest thought into it you’d see exactly how useful they’d be in this case.”

Celebrimbor laughed. “The spirit of collegiality, Annatar! Olme always wants to see new illness or injury. Do you remember how happy he was when Damros decided to use isinglass from those dried Northern fish to make clarifying gel for his confections, and gave everyone who tried them visions and nerve tremors that lasted a week?”

“I am not having you  _ experimented on _ , not when we’re this close. Sit down.” 

Still laughing, Celebrimbor sat down, and heard the quiet clink of glass as his companion uncapped a bottle that he had removed from one of the drawers of the workbench.  Annatar took his sore hand again, and the sharp, pungent scent of rosemary and wintergreen filled the air as he lightly worked the substance into the skin over the joints. The touch of the oil was first cold and tingling, then kindling imperceptibly into a deep pleasant heat.

“That’s Sildreth’s compound,” Celebrimbor said. He was not sure why he had closed his eyes, but he felt no inclination to open them. “Same thing you’d rub on any aching muscle after a long day -- Master Aulendil, servant of fire and craft, do  _ you _ know what you’re doing?”

Then, bright against his soul, he felt a warmth like the passage of a sunbeam: Annatar’s attention turned full upon him.

 

The infinite subtle connections of soul to body lit up under his attention like the imperfections of a surface caught in raking light, but understanding was not mastery, not yet. If he could simply command the strength of Tyelperinquar’s spirit to flow at his direction, reinforcing the area worn to weakness and pain by unstinting use.   _ Time _ , Tyelperinquar had said,  _ rest,  _ but if either of them had been content to wait for the world to right itself, they would not be here together, in this Elvish city whose lines wove about them, frayed and tangled but gradually being spun into focus and strength. 

He picked up the prototype ring where it lay on the workbench and slipped it onto his finger. Tyelperinquar’s hand curled softly in his own at the motion. He felt the pulse beating through it. Extraordinarily fine hands Tyelperinquar had; tools by which his thought was translated into matter -- matter like the ring in its frozen circle on his finger.

Cautiously, testing its stability, he sent his will out through the ring. It trembled, but held, and the magnification was everything that they could have desired. There were the lines of tendency in the world, of soul and body, injury and health, and his command to them, directed through the ring --

 

There was a weight against him, or perhaps it was pressure, a pulling sensation at his spirit. Celebrimbor tried to turn his attention upon Annatar as Annatar’s was on him, but close as he was, his spirit was bright and opaque as ever; the power hot against his hand was not Annatar’s but his own.

Sudden and vivid, though it was sense and not image, he saw himself curled around Annatar, the smooth weight of Annatar’s skin along his own, cool on the surface, bright fire beneath, digging his fingers into Annatar’s shoulders, pulling him closer -

Deliberately, he dispersed the thought, scattering the picture like stirring his hand through water to break up a reflection. He forced his eyes back open and Annatar was sitting beside him, head bowed as if in deep concentration. If he had noticed, he was courteous enough to give no sign. The prototype ring was burning as he ran his hand over Celebrimbor’s.

With a sudden sharp hiss, Annatar shook himself free and pulled his hand away. The ring was burning indeed – red hot, white hot, and then with a crackling like lightning and an acrid smell, burst into pieces and fell to the floor.

The two of them looked at the pieces of the ring for a moment, and then back to each other.

“Well that was instructive,” said Celebrimbor lightly. Annatar’s eyes were golden and distant.

“That’s it,” he said after a moment. “For the greater rings, the binding matrix -- we don’t need to reinforce it, we need to  _ ground _ it. Anything of the correct resonance should work; we can try a variety of different gemstones, but that’s the binding matrix problem  _ solved --“  _ A sudden smile lit his face. “Try your hand, Tyelperinquar.”

Carefully Celebrimbor flexed his fingers, felt the connection between soul and body still sensitive but strong and whole. “Yes, we can start tonight!”

There was a peal of laughter outside in the hall and a hammering at the workshop door. At Celebrimbor’s wordless sound, his journeymen came tumbling in, clearly having begun the feasting already and in very high spirits. The oldest of them attempted to muster the sober demeanor suited to addressing his master., and bowed very gracefully but not quite steadily.

“Lord of Eregion – Lords,” he added, seeing Annatar, “your guests lack you.”

“The spiced wine floweth,” announced another journeyman in pure  _ parmaquesta _ , “and high leapeth the fire; come down, Masters both, ere the Longest Night end!” She proffered both of them crowns of holly, the berries blood-bright against the dark leaves.  Annatar took them with great courtesy, donning one and handing the other to Celebrimbor as the journeymen, laughing and shouting, left the workshop and proceeded on through the hallways and towers, seeking out any of the masters kept over-late by labor or study.

“Shall we go down?” Set on Annatar’s silver-gold hair, the leaves looked almost black, as if they had been wrought from iron.

“After you, my Lord of Gifts.”

Celebrimbor, returning him a smile of assent, set the holly crown lightly upon his head, and felt the faintest prickle of the thorn-sharp leaves through his hair.

 


End file.
